Orange Curtain

The Orange Curtain is a local term for the border between Orange County and Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California.[1] It is a sometimes derogatory, sometimes lighthearted term that is used to describe Orange County's more conservative and suburban population as compared to the more liberal and urban population of Los Angeles.[2][3][4]

The flag of Orange County

The phrase is a wordplay on the so-called Iron Curtain which separated communist and capitalist Europe.[5]

According to Colleen Cotter, "Because [Orange County] has a reputation for political conservatism, people from Northern California especially worry about what happens 'Behind the Orange Curtain'."[4]

The Orange Curtain began from the fact that between 1890 and 1950, Orange County was wholly white and "the region's predominately Irish settling also embraced an ideology of small government.[6]

References

  1. Dickson, Paul (2006). Labels for Locals: What to Call People from Abilene to Zimbabwe (Revised ed.). HarperCollins. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-06-088164-1. Retrieved 2011-02-10. The term "Orange Curtain" is being used to mark those characteristics, real or imagined, that differentiate Orange County from Los Angeles and the rest of California.
  2. Overley, Jeff (January 4, 2008). "Are we on TV too much?". Orange County Register. Retrieved 2008-04-08.
  3. http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/orange_curtain/
  4. Cotter, Colleen (2001). Lonely Planet USA Phrasebook: Understanding Americans & Their Culture (Lonely Planet Phrasebooks). Hawthorn, Vic., Australia: Lonely Planet Publications. p. 199. ISBN 1-86450-182-0.
  5. Jennifer Lefurgy; Lang, Robert (2007). Boomburbs: the rise of America's accidental cities. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press. p. 165. ISBN 0-8157-5114-1.
  6. Aguilar-San Juan, Karin (2009). Little Saigons: staying Vietnamese in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. xii. ISBN 0-8166-5486-7. John Birch-style ideology.


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